Ela
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I felt as if I were floating.
The world around me seemed to swirl and distort around me body, but I did not want to fight it. My body was no longer under my control, but I didn’t mind too much. I felt… peaceful for one of the first times ever, and I wished for nothing more than to revel in the feeling for a bit longer. Everything was silent and calm and not at all like my life.
Just as I felt like I was about to drift off once again, flashes of memory appeared: Sam placing a gas mask on his face, a strange smelling gas appearing in the air, the rest of the club members screaming and gasping for fresh air, the van, and, then, darkness.
I needed to wake up.
I tried to stir, but my body protested. Come on, dammit! My mind screamed wildly as I tried to gain control. The feeling of weightlessness began to dwindle as I thought about the danger that I was in. I needed to escape.
And so began the struggle between my body and mind. My body wanted nothing more than to sleep for a few more minutes, hours, or even days. It was safe inside this fog. I was safe. Nothing could hurt me. All I needed to do was sleep.
However, my mind knew the truth. I was in danger. It was too good to be true--I had never had anything good in my life, so why start now? I had to get out of here. The real world was waiting. I had people to protect, right?
And, of course, the mind always wins.
My eyes shot open, and all I could see was a blinding white light above me. I squinted and held my hand over my face as my eyes adjusted to the brightness. I sat up and looked around. I was lying on a small bed, and next to me was a counter full of various medical tools. Everything in the room was white, except for the blinking red light of the lock on the door. I examined myself and found that my clothes had vanished, being replaced by something resembling a hospital gown.
The pungent smell of antiseptic and chemicals floated by my nostrils, and I cupped my hands over my nose and mouth to prevent gagging from the odor. I reached over and picked up one of the glass jars from the counter and examined the label. I didn’t recognize the name of the drug inside, but the name of the manufacturing company was something all too familiar:
Xenogenesis Laboratories.
Upon seeing this, my hands began to shake as the anger inside me built and exploded. I gave a violent cry as I threw the bottle at the wall with all of my strength. It shattered upon impact and dozens of sharp pieces of glass glittered towards the floor. I leapt off of the bed and swiftly ran my arm across the counter, knocking all of the instruments and jars to the ground. The sounds of shattered glass and clattering metal were a wonderful sound to my ears, a contrast to the ghostly, deafening silence of my drug-induced state.
My breaths came in and out raggedly as I stood in the midst of the debris.
It was all over.
Everything was ruined.
We had been caught.
But not just caught--betrayed.
I could feel the hot trail of blood running down my legs from their piercing via the shrapnel. The sound of crunching glass echoed from underneath my feet, and I could not even imagine what they looked like. In the ricochet off of the end of the counter, a piece of glass must have slid down my arm as well, as I could feel the sharp pain of an open gash combined with rolling sensation of blood, followed by the light splat sound of the drops hitting the ground.
But I didn’t care. What was the point? It’s not like I had anything left to live for. I could have bled out right there an no one would have cared.
In my rage, I did not take notice to the sudden flood of guards entering my room. One grabbed me by the arm, and I whirled around and punched him in the face with my free arm. His grip on my arm released as he staggered backwards, but was soon replaced by two more hands, each grabbing a different arm.
I thrashed wildly in their grip. “Let go of me!” I screamed repeatedly, my voice shrill and cracking. I kicked my legs and swung my arms and my head in order to try to break their grip, but to no avail. There was no space to unfurl my wings to knock the guards away, so I just sighed and let my body go limp. It was useless.
I heard a click from the other side of the door, and the light on the lock began to flash green. The large white door slid open, revealing the form of a no-longer-friendly face escorted by a pair of guards.
“You…” I growled, my eyes narrowing into a glare.
“Oh, hey.” Sam grinned a sinister smile, something that seemed alien to his normally cheerful face. He seemed to have showered and put on a fresh set of clothes, while here I was standing in a bloodstained, paper-thin dress, seething in anger and confusion. I though back to the scene at the mansion. How could he dare show his face to me?
If it hadn’t been for the restraint of the guards holding me back, I swear that I would have killed him right there. One of the guards held out a small vial of clear liquid and a syringe. I could only watch, wide-eyed, as the boy took the objects from the man’s hands.
On that fateful day when I met Sam, something about him had seemed oddly familiar.
…And now I knew why.
Images and memories came flooding back into my brain in that instant. Things like me being strapped to a lab table. Being poked and prodded with sharp instruments. Being hooked up to a monitor and observed. Being pushed to my breaking points, physically and mentally. Burning pain. Terrible side effects.
And in each of these memories, there was a familiar face lurking in the background, watching over each of the events. Not even only observing. Sometimes, it was participating. And it was a familiar face that just so happened to have electric blue eyes and short, dirty blonde hair.
I stared disbelievingly into his eyes. I just couldn’t believe it. This was all a horrible trick. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. I searched for a sign of said trickery, but the boy only returned a flat, emotionless look.
“So it was all a lie?” I whispered weakly. I thought of all of the memories I had shared with him since joining the club. Late night deck chats. Video games. Meals. Everything felt so fake all of a sudden. I had opened up to this boy. I had never opened up to anyone in my life, and this is where it got me.
And for the first time since discovering my abandonment by my brother, I felt tears rolling down my face. It started with one hot tear, but was soon joined by several others. The salty liquid tasted strange on my tongue as a few drops ran over my lips.
“Yep. Had to do something to keep watch over that little club of Akira’s. Dad’s orders.” He answered with a sense of boredom. He stuck the needle into the top of the vial and drew the liquid up into the tube. He handed the glass bottle back to the guard and examined the syringe carefully. He tapped the cylinder with his finger to make the chemicals settle, and then took a step towards me.
“W-why me?” I stuttered through the tears.
“It was simple,” Sam declared. “You’ve never been able to turn down helping someone weaker than you. It’s always been one of your more prominent traits. You may act the part of a tough girl, but deep down inside, all you want to do is help people.”
“B-but, why?” I managed to stammer.
He laughed, but it was nothing like the soft laugh that I had become accustomed to hearing over the past months. “You guys should know. You’re freaks, right? And this place is one big ol’ freak show.” He made a wide gesture to refer to the lab.
Freak show. That’s right. That’s all I was, and that’s all I would ever be. I was crazy to think otherwise.
Sam continued to walk slowly towards me, and all I could do was sigh and accept what was coming. I sniffled and held my head up defiantly towards the boy, as if to say “you can try to break me, but f*ck you.” Or maybe something a bit more eloquent. He merely smirked at me as he readied the syringe, and I smashed my eyes shut, feeling a set of tears escape from the edges of my eyelashes in the process.
I felt pain. But it wasn’t anything physical. Something was tearing me up on the inside, and it was more agonizing than any bruise or broken bone I had ever had in my life. And it hurt. It hurt so badly that I wanted to rip the cause of the pain from deep within my chest and be done with it. But I knew that wasn’t possible. And that made it hurt even more.
Suddenly, my disbelief was replaced by rage. I thrashed around in the guards’ hold once more, and this time was able to catch them off guard. I broke free and launched myself forward, tackling the blonde boy to the ground. In his surprise, the syringe fell out of his hand and rolled across the floor. I quickly straddled him so that he could not get away.
I grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and pulled his face towards mine. “I trusted you!” I screamed, feeling my voice crack once more. I pulled my arm back and then let it make contact with the boy’s jaw. My eyes burned--the tears were falling even harder now. I watched as several of the droplets fell onto his face. I was sobbing. “I trusted you, dammit!” I repeated between sobs. The blood seeping from my arm began to streak his shirt in stripes of crimson. It was better that way, I thought--Give him a reminder of what he had caused.
Sam merely looked up at me as I continued to shake him. How could he do this? How could he be so emotionless about it?
I soon felt the pinprick-like feel of the syringe making contact with my flesh. I could feel the thick tranquilizer as it was injected into my veins, and I began to lose control over my body immediately. I limply flopped over onto the cold, glass covered floor. Suddenly, everything sounded as if I were in a tunnel. The dulled noises of footsteps echoed in my ears as Sam stood up and walked over to me, looming over my pathetic figure.
As the world faded into darkness around me, I looked up at the blonde and thought, if only there fleetingly, that I saw a flash of remorse in his eyes.
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My eyes were gritty and sticky as they opened once more against the blinding light.
I pushed myself up into a sitting position and found that I was still in the same room. However, all of the tools were now gone and the glass had been cleaned up. The room now smelled of bleach, probably an attempt to clean the blood from the floor. The only thing left in here to keep me company was the blinking red dot on the door.
I checked myself, and found that I had been cleaned up as well. The blood had been washed away, and my gown had been changed. I lightly traced a line of stitches extending from the crook of my arm to my wrist, and found that I had been similarly stitched in other places. A dull numbness filled my body, but I couldn’t decide if it was from the tranquilizer or the stitches. I heaved a large sigh.
None of this seemed real. Couldn’t I just go back to how life was days earlier?
Somehow, I managed to push myself off of the bed, and steadied myself against the counter. My legs felt like jelly and my head was spinning in fifty million directions, but I was able to move myself to the corner of the room.
I hugged myself closely as I slumped down to the floor, leaning against the wall. I wasn’t sure how long I sat there in a daze, but the sound of a scream from down the hall snapped me back to reality for a moment. I drew my legs to my chest and placed my hands over my head. My eyes began to water, and I tried to blink the tears away. I had already shown weakness once today--I couldn’t afford to do it again. But my body seemed to disagree, and the tears soon spilled over.
How could I have been so stupid? It was my fault that we were here. All because I had decided to let someone in. Wasn’t this why I had sworn off friendships in the first place? Because they always ended in someone getting hurt? But now it wasn’t just someone, it was a lot of people. And none of them deserved this.
At the time, I couldn’t understand why I had let Sam join me in the club. Even now, I still couldn’t. How could I have forgotten something so scarring as being experimented on? How had Sam’s face not registered more clearly on that day in Atlanta? My stomach churned to think of what these scientists were capable of.
We were going to die. Or worse, even.
And it was all because of me.
It was because I was weak, I realized. Sam was right. I always tried to play tough, but in reality, I clung to anything that kept me attached to reality. In this case, it just so happened to backfire in my face.
"Dad’s orders."
I hadn’t just let a traitor in. Oh, no. I had let the son of the ringleader in. He knew everything about Xenogenesis Labs. He knew everything about us. Me. My likes. My dislikes. My weaknesses. I thought he understood me. He had seemed like Mr. Perfect, but it was all just a big fat lie. I felt so used, and the dull pain reprising in my chest only made me feel worse.
The tears continued to run down my face as I rocked back in forth in the corner.
It was my fault.
It was my fault.
It was my fault.
It was my fault.
It was my fault.
It was my fault.
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WHAT ARE EMOTIONS AND WHY CAN I NOT CAPTURE THEM WELL?
Had to do some major tweaking to this post because I wrote it ahead of time for the plot twist like a loser and half of the stuff ended up not fitting in. xD oops.
MY BABY. D’: Ela will probably be BSOD’ing for quite a while.
Comments and stuff would be nice, yo. -shot-
